BOULDER -- Boulder County officials need more time to get the information they need to complete the crafting of new regulations to address the potential negative public-health and environmental impacts of expanded oil and gas exploration activities in unincorporated areas, County Planning Commission members warned on Wednesday night.

Boulder County's present moratorium on processing oil and gas companies' applications and development plans for local oil and gas drilling permits, a temporary timeout that's been in place since early February, remains in effect until next Feb. 4.

On Wednesday, members of the county's advisory planning panel -- which has been working on recommendations for updating those local land-use rules -- voted to urge the Board of County Commissioners to extend that moratorium for another three to six months beyond that Feb. 4 expiration date, "in order to gain additional information."

Planning commissioner Scott Holwick said he wasn't sure he and his colleagues on that panel have "enough information to make a worthwhile recommendation" about new Boulder County oil and gas regulations, although he had to leave the meeting before the vote on the moratorium extension.

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Earlier in Wednesday's meeting, several Boulder County residents argued during a public hearing that the current draft version of the proposed regulations wasn't restrictive enough to protect current and future populations from the possible hazards of the process of hydraulic fracturing -- the injection of a mixture of sand, water and chemicals to free up underground oil and gas deposits -- and horizontal drilling.

"The technology and research on this unconventional form of fossil-fuel extraction is still in its infancy," said Audy Leggere-Hickey. "I ask you to please consider a new moratorium until these regulations can be brought in line with the Boulder County Comprehensive Plan, not an oil and gas industry plan for Boulder County."

Kate Johnson, another speaker at the hearing, asked planning commissioners to demand that a five-year emergency moratorium on drilling be imposed before any new county rules take effect.

Planning commissioner Meg Blum said that though she didn't necessarily favor a five-year extension of the current moratorium, there are "many scientific issues" that still need to be explored.

"This has turned out to be much, much more complex than any of us anticipated," said planning commissioner Doug Young

Young, however, dissented from Wednesday night's 4-1 vote urging Boulder County Commissioners to enact a three- to six-month extension of the moratorium. Young said the panel's vote could wait until Oct. 30, when the Planning Commission resumes work on the proposed drilling regulations.

Boulder County commissioners already have had to defend the length of the current year-long moratorium, when it was challenged by Thom Kerr, the then-acting director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

Kerr said in a May 31 letter to the Board of County Commissioners that "local moratoria that extend to approximately a year are not compatible with the balanced development of oil and gas that allows for responsible production and the economic stimulus it creates."

The Boulder County commissioners, however, replied in a June letter to Kerr that the one-year moratorium was needed to complete all the work they expected it would take to "review and revise our oil and gas regulations for the first time in greater than 20 years."

The county commissioners wrote Kerr last summer that "while we have been diligently pursuing this project, much more work needs to be done. It is our hope that we will be able to finish all of our processes and implement new regulations prior to the Feb. 4, 2013, expiration date for the moratorium."

Posing potential complications for Boulder County's completion of its regulatory changes, however, is the fact that the state Oil and Gas Conservation Commission will also soon be considering revising its own statewide rules about such issues as how far wells must be set back from homes, schools, hospitals and other buildings, and the sampling and monitoring of groundwater near new well pads. The state agency has scheduled Nov. 14 hearings in Denver on its proposed rules changes.

John Chandler of Lafayette, who said he co-owns an oil and gas production company that operates in several states, told Boulder County planning commissioners Wednesday that Colorado has some of "the most robust" drilling regulations in the nation.

Chandler said that state regulatory system won't work, however, if every city and county tries to enact its own rules. He said the proposed Boulder County regulations are confusing, and he urged the county to work instead with Gov. John Hickenlooper and the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

But Rick Casey, a Lafayette resident who said he's taught environmental economics at Front Range Community College since 2009, told planning commissioners he's become "firmly convinced that fracking is a wrong and unnecessary policy of resource development.

"We should instead be investing in alternative energy and building the base for a truly sustainable energy future, instead of the short-term opportunistic policy of hydraulic fracturing," Casey said.

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